May Young Loh

Emotional labour (EL) has become a serious concern in the modern workplace due to the rapid development of the service‐oriented economy. Existing literature reviews of emotional labour studies leave many questions unexplored. This study addresses these questions by conducting a holistic review of 143 high‐impact empirical articles published in peer‐reviewed journals from APA PsycInfo, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, Scopus, and Web of Science using the TCCM framework (Theory‐Context‐Characteristics‐Methodology). The document search process is visualised with a PRISMA diagram. We point out several future directions for scholars who are interested in emotional labour. For example, emotional labour research needs to transition from cross‐sectional designs to multi‐wave designs. Most importantly, this study serves as a roadmap for scholars to navigate the complexity of emotional labour research and provides practitioners with evidence‐based strategies to mitigate the negative influence of emotional labour.

Objective: To examine the association between PSC and psychological distress, and decompose this relationship into direct, indirect and interaction pathways involving workplace MH stigma. Method: A cross-sectional survey assessed 999 Canadian workers. Mediation was explored using a model-based potential outcomes approach, while moderation was analysed via logistic regression. Results: The risk difference in psychological distress between high- and low-risk PSC environments was 0.122. Of this effect, 66.7% was direct, 12.9% was mediated by stigma, and 20.4% reflected PSC–stigma interaction. The stigma–distress association was stronger in high-risk PSC environments (OR = 3.58 [1.91–6.70]) than in low-risk environments (OR = 2.10 [1.04–4.23]). Conclusions: The majority of the association between PSC and distress is not via MH stigma, while the strength of the stigma–distress association varied by PSC level.

Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) is a key organisational factor that reflects management's commitment to protecting employees' psychological health and safety. Although PSC is known to influence work stress and mental health, its association with sleep health remains underexplored. We analysed cross‐sectional data from 4827 daytime wage workers enrolled in the 5th wave of the Korean Work, Sleep, and Health Study (KWSHS). PSC was measured using a validated four‐item scale and categorised into low, moderate, and high‐risk. Sleep quality and insomnia symptoms were assessed using the Korean versions of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), respectively. Linear and logistic regression models were used to examine associations between PSC levels and sleep health outcomes, adjusting for age, sex, and occupation. Lower PSC was significantly associated with poorer sleep quality ( β = −0.05, p < 0.001) and more severe insomnia symptoms ( β = −0.05, p < 0.001). Compared with the low‐risk PSC group, the high‐risk group showed increased odds of poor sleep quality (OR = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.04–1.43). Subgroup analysis revealed that older adults (≥ 60 years), highly educated workers, full‐time employees, and non‐unionised workers were particularly vulnerable to poor sleep health in low PSC environments. PSC plays a protective role in sleep health, and its absence may exacerbate the adverse effects of work‐related stressors. Enhancing PSC at the organisational level may improve sleep health, particularly for vulnerable worker populations.

OBJECTIVES: Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) reflects an organization’s commitment to safeguarding workers’ psychological health and safety. While international evidence links low PSC to poor mental health outcomes, its association with depression has not been well established in Korea. This study aimed to examine the relationship between PSC and depression among Korean workers, utilizing a large-scale, population-based survey.METHODS: We analyzed data from 5,337 wage employees who participated in the fifth wave of the Korean Work, Sleep, and Health Study. Depression was measured using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire, and PSC was assessed with a validated 4-item scale. Participants were classified into low-risk, intermediate-risk, and high-risk groups based on their PSC scores. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to estimate the association between PSC and depression, with stratified analyses performed according to gender, age, and occupational characteristics.RESULTS: The prevalence of depression increased as PSC scores decreased. Compared to the low-risk group, the intermediate-risk and high-risk PSC groups exhibited 1.19 times and 2.69 times higher risks of depression, respectively, suggesting a clear exposure-response relationship. Stratified analyses indicated that associations were stronger among individuals without union representation or access to occupational health and safety resources.CONCLUSIONS: These findings underscore the critical role of PSC in workplace mental health. Promoting a high PSC may help reduce depression risk and support mental well-being among workers. Interventions considering vulnerable subgroups are warranted to create psychologically safer work environments in Korea.

Occupational health and safety researchers and policymakers often rely on organisational theories and evidence to provide valuable information for effective policy making and understanding. Yet, most traditional and contemporary organisational theories are developed within a single nation, often in high‐income countries. Therefore, cross‐national validation is required for generalisable worldwide use. The current study focuses on an antecedent to workplace health and safety, that is, the psychosocial safety climate (PSC), and aims to investigate if PSC is an etic (i.e., universally applicable) or emic (i.e., nationally/context specific) theory. Across nations, we investigate the construct meaning of PSC by testing PSC measurement invariance and the invariance of a nomological network of PSC relationships, (1) PSC to co‐worker to work engagement (PSC extended Job‐Demands Resources (JD‐R) motivational pathway), (2) PSC to co‐worker support to psychological distress (PSC extended JD‐R health erosion pathway), and (3) the moderation of PSC on the co‐worker to outcomes relationship. A total of 5854 employees from four nations (Australia = 1198, New Zealand = 2029, Malaysia = 575, Japan = 2052) participated in the study. Multi‐group structural equation modelling suggested that there was measurement invariance in a four‐factor PSC model across the four samples. Findings from multigroup analyses support both the PSC extended motivational and health erosion pathways across nations, as well as the moderation effect of PSC in the Australian and Japanese samples. Together, the results largely support the etic nature of PSC construct and theory, with a few national nuances.

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is defined as the corporate climate in relation to employees’ perceptions of organizational policies, procedures, and practices for the protection of employee psychosocial safety and well-being. The present study was based on the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation (DISC) Model and proposed that the interplay between identical job demands and resources would be conditioned by PSC. Particularly, high levels of PSC would enable employees to optimally perceive and utilize more job resources in dealing with corresponding job demands. A study was conducted among 406 Chinese workers from various occupational sectors. The findings of hierarchical regression analyses suggested that PSC a) mitigates the negative relation between emotional resources and exhaustion, b) enhances the positive relation between emotional resources and work engagement, and c) mitigates the negative relation between emotional demands and work engagement. We also found that PSC is a compensatory factor for low cognitive resources and demands encouraging high work engagement. Although we did not find the proposed three-way interactions, the present findings support the idea that high PSC is a fundamental contextual factor conducive to workers’ health and well-being, especially in perceiving and obtaining emotional resources.

Work-related stress is a major occupational health and safety (OHS) issue that has industrial relations origins. Aside from the moral and human rights imperatives to improve the corporate climate for worker psychological health (as per psychosocial safety climate, PSC), there are strong economic costs for not doing so. PSC refers to worker perceptions of the corporate safety system to protect and promote workers’ psychological health and wellbeing. It is a leading indicator of working conditions, which in turn affect workers’ health and work engagement. In this study, we estimate the attributable economic cost of low PSC due to sickness absence and turnover. Data were collected from a multinational company using survey at Time 1 (T1) and objective company data (i.e., sickness absence and turnover) after one year (T2). Using regression analysis and a matched sample of 617 responses, PSC was negatively related to future sickness absence. A binomial logistic regression with 1268 respondents (i.e., all responses at T1) showed that PSC was negatively related to future voluntary turnover. An economic analysis suggests that improving OHS via PSC could save an organisation with 5000 employees USD 0.6–2.7 million per year. Building PSC to protect and promote workers’ psychological health is a likely economic saving on organisational productivity.